“No form of Nature is inferior to Art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
Meditations. xi. 10.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term "Art," I should call it "the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul." The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of "Artist".”
Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)
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Edgar Allan Poe126
American author, poet, editor and literary critic 1809–1849Related quotes
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Quote from a letter to Maurice Dennis, 1889; as quoted by John Rewald in Pierre Bonnard; MoMA - distribution, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1918, p. 14 - note 7
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Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Art-Principle as Represented in Poetry, p.199-200
R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher
Source: Outlines of a Philosophy of Art, 1925, p. 7
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
“What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art.”
Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time
Ce qu'on appelle la postérité, c'est la postérité de l'œuvre.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919), Ch. I: "Madame Swann at Home"
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright
Letter 4: Theosophy of Julius
The Philosophical Letters
Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor
"A Pictorial Biography" (Tate Publishing, London, 1970)
1961 - 1975
“I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day.”
Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist
"Free Hope" p. 128.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
Context: I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day. All my days are touched by the supernatural, for I feel the pressure of hidden causes, and the presence, sometimes the communion, of unseen powers. It needs not that I should ask the clairvoyant whether "a spirit-world projects into ours." As to the specific evidence, I would not tarnish my mind by hasty reception. The mind is not, I know, a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open. Yet it were sin, if indolence or coldness excluded what had a claim to enter; and I doubt whether, in the eyes of pure intelligence, an ill-grounded hasty rejection be not a greater sign of weakness than an ill-grounded and hasty faith.
Zisi (-481–-402 BC) Chinese philosopher
Opening lines, p. 104
Variant translations:
What is God-given is called nature; to follow nature is called Tao (the Way); to cultivate the Way is called culture.
As translated by Lin Yutang in The Importance of Living (1937), p. 143
What is God-given is called human nature.
To fulfill that nature is called the moral law (Tao).
The cultivation of the moral law is called culture.
As translated by Lin Yutang in From Pagan to Christian (1959), p. 85
The Doctrine of the Mean